In 1937, Shanghai is the Paris of Asia. Thanks to the financial security and material comforts provided by their fathers prosperous rickshaw business, twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, are having the time of their lives - until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away their wealth and that in order to repay his debts he must sell the girls as wives to suitors who have traveled from California to find Chinese brides. As Japanese bombs fall on their beloved city, Pearl and May set out on the journey of a lifetime, one that will take them through the Chinese countryside, in and out of the clutch of brutal soldiers, and across the Pacific to the shores of America. In Los Angeles they begin a fresh chapter, trying to find love with the strangers they have married, brushing against the seduction of Hollywood, and striving to embrace American life.